rigorousintuition.ca

Garcia Richard will terminate Jeffrey Epstein’s NM grazing leases
BY JOURNAL NORTH REPORT
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2019 at 6:38pm
SANTA FE – State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard has decided to terminate two livestock grazing leases with a company owned by Jeffery Epstein, the financier accused of trafficking and abusing teenaged girls in Florida and elsewhere who committed suicide last month.

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State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard
Last week, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas urged official to retake state trust land that had been leased to Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch, saying the financier’s bid for the scrubby, desert acreage meant for cattle grazing should not have been granted.

Balderas accused Epstein of leasing the state land simply to build privacy around a multimillion-dollar estate on his own land near Stanley in southern Santa Fe. The AG’s Office also is investigating whether Epstein trafficked or abused girls at his 10,000-acre Zorro Ranch.

The office of Garcia Richard, who announced last month she would pursue options for canceling Epstein’s trust land leases, on Tuesday issued a news release saying that on Wednesday she will announce termination of two grazing leases with Epstein’s Cypress Inc. which date back to 1993.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1361551/garc ... =post+list

Adam Klasfeld
‏
Good morning again from New York.

Right before Jeffrey Epstein’s death, a large cache of files became public in Giuffre v. Maxwell. Proceedings over what happens to the remainder of sealed files begin today at 9 a.m.

I will cover that hearing live for @CourthouseNews.

‏
ICYMI: Here was the 10-page John Doe letter arguing against unsealing of non-parties in the Jeffrey Epstein litigation.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... l-Doe.html …

"All rise."

Preska: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Won't you be seated?

We begin.
‏
Giuffre's attorney Sigrid McCawley says they have proposed an unsealing that would be a review of the docket in a "staggered form."

Preska: It seems you parties should have had a conversation already about what you agree can be unsealed.

McCawley says the parties have not yet agreed on anything.

Maxwell's attorney Jeffrey S. Pagliuca is up, and Preska seems frustrated that there has been no agreement in advance about what can go public.

"Did you people not talk about this?" she asked.

Pagliuca replied that they did talk but simply did not reach an agreement. He proposes dividing the documents into three categories, as to whether they qualify as judicial documents, "non-judicial" documents or negligibly judicial documents.

Preska seems skeptical.
‏
Pagliuca said that the documents contains "hundreds" if not "thousands" of non-parties.

"There are literally hundreds of pages of investigative reports that mention hundreds of people."

There is also an "address book that has a 1,000 names in it."

Pagliuca proposes the three-category procedure, based on whether the documents qualify as "judicial," in order to sift through whether those non-parties would be implicated.

Andrew Celli says that Dershowitz's position is there "should be maximum disclosure at maximum speed."

Preska deadpans: "I don't care."

She's soliciting specific procedures by the parties of how to move ahead, not their broad, off-topic talking points.

McCawley: It sounds like there is some disagreement, your honor.

Preska: No kidding.

Preska, without ruling, appears somewhat swayed by three-category procedure to avoid potentially notifying 1,000 people named in docs that may be designated "non-judicial."

McCawley disputes that 1,000 people would need to be notified.

Pagliuca says: “There are hundreds of other people implicated” in the other documents.

Preska instructs the parties on their written briefings.

Today's hearings ended with a schedule being set for those written briefings.

Maxwell's attorney Pagliuca argued that it was too fast a schedule, only to be rebuffed by Preska, who said they would act "expeditiously."
https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/sta ... 1858917376

Jeffrey Epstein Targeted Dancers at NYC Studios - Pointe
Amy BrandtSep. 03, 2019 10:11AM EST
Getty Images
The New York Times reported this morning that Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier accused of sex trafficking dozens of teenage girls and young women, and who died by suicide in prison on August 10 while awaiting trial, preyed on dancers in New York City. The article tells the accounts of four women, two referenced in court papers and two who were interviewed by the newspaper. All were approached by a recruiter—and in half the cases, that person was another dancer.

For two of the reported victims, years of sexual abuse followed. One, known only as Lisa in a lawsuit against Epstein's estate, was just 17 when another dancer approached her after ballet class in 2002 and asked if she'd be interested in giving private exercise classes to Epstein for money. But once she met with him, Epstein wanted to talk about her career goals, offered to pay for her pointe shoes and asked her to engage in sexually inappropriate stretching exercises. On later visits, he asked her to give him massages. Another dancer, known in her lawsuit as Priscilla Doe, was recruited to give massages to Epstein in 2006 and was flown to his Florida mansion for the session. Both lawsuits claim Epstein sexually assaulted the women during their visits. He then coerced them into continued sexual activity for years, under the implication that, with his wealth and connections, he would help advance their dance careers if they did what he wanted—and ruin their careers if they refused. (When Lisa started to look too old, the lawsuit claims, he asked her to recruit younger dancers from the studio she attended.)

Two other dancers gave accounts to the New York Times describing uncomfortably close calls with Epstein. In 2006, Marlo Fisken, a dance instructor now based in Colorado, was in her early 20s and had just moved to New York City when a woman she met in a bar asked if she'd like to be the financier's personal trainer. Epstein started making sexual requests after a few sessions. Fisken, who says she also taught a class to two teenage girls living in one of his apartments, refused his advances and stopped working for him.

In 2013, Nadia Vostrikov had just finished class when a dancer approached her and asked if she could take over teaching classes to her private client. She agreed to speak with him first via Skype, she tells the Times, where he offered to fly her to his Florida home. But she ended contact once he told her he was a registered sex offender and he suggested that she she google his name. She soon learned that Epstein had spent a controversially short 13-month jail sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. "I was in disbelief," Vostrikov told Pointe in an interview this afternoon. "He had his exact script, because he had gotten in trouble before. He found a way to still do what he was doing within the confines of the dance world."

Getty Images

These deeply disturbing revelations suggest that Epstein sensed vulnerability within the dance community and specifically targeted it. Sadly, I'm not surprised. Early in my career I learned that dancers are often fetishized due to the physical nature of what we do. Vostrikov agrees. "Both in and out of the dance industry, I feel like there's a perception that dancers are willing to do 'whatever it takes,' so to speak," she says. "They are over-sexualized on television, in photographs. Companies encourage dancers to mingle with wealthy patrons, and while I've never experienced that in a sexual way, there's a perception that dancers are a selling point."

And unless you are contracted with a major company in New York City, it can be very difficult to make a living, much less pay for daily class and pointe shoes. I know because I was a freelance dancer in New York for 10 years and I was frequently broke. Most of my gigs came through word of mouth. If someone had approached me with a lucrative side job, especially if that person was a fellow dancer, I would have at least looked into it.

But I believe Epstein was preying on more than our financial desperation—dancers are so young and eager when they start out in this very competitive profession. And it's no secret that this career, with its wall-to-wall mirrors, lack of jobs and near-constant critical feedback, can exacerbate low self-esteem. Vostrikov is disheartened by commenters on the New York Times site who blame the two dancers who continued to be sexually exploited by Epstein. "He created this whole web of intricacies and scripts and connections to create a false sense of trust, which he then abused to get what he wanted," says Vostrikov. "I may have said no, but the fact of the matter is he still found me, and he still found the girl who recruited me. That's the sick part. He manipulated the inner-family feeling that we have as dancers."

One thing is clear: the dance community must be more watchful. Vostrikov advises students to take a trusted friend to meetings or photo shoots. "It's okay to say no to requests that don't feel right." And with all of the recent #MeToo scandals coming to light in our profession, we must be more diligent about supporting, educating and protecting our young dancers to prevent this from happening again.
https://www.pointemagazine.com/jeffrey- ... 83763.html

ICYMI: Here was the 10-page John Doe letter arguing against unsealing of non-parties in the Jeffrey Epstein litigation.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... l-Doe.html

KKL is the only law firm in the country to have been founded by three departing SDNY Criminal Division supervising prosecutors. Over the past decade, KKL’s founding partners have conducted more than 30 federal criminal trials and have led some of the most significant and sensitive federal prosecutions in the country, including the successful prosecutions of senior financial services executives, politicians, and senior members of al Qaeda. One of the partners [Lewin] also served as senior advisor to former Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) Robert S. Mueller III and James B. Comey.

Introducing Broken: Jeffrey Epstein
BROKEN: Jeffrey Epstein
True Crime
Listen on Apple Podcasts

Julie K. Brown’s expose of Jeffrey Epstein launched hundreds of headlines. But the story isn’t over. "Broken: Jeffrey Epstein" is a new podcast from Three Uncanny Four Productions. New episodes every Thursday, starting September 5th.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b ... 0448199818

David Beard

The pro-Jeffrey Epstein comments at the @mit @medialab today clearly stunned some of the listeners. "A woman in the front row began crying." https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614264/mit
https://twitter.com/joshtpm

random facts girl.

Sounds like @nnegroponte would still be cool taking money that his friend Jeffrey harvested from between the bloodied legs of underage girls coerced and manipulated into sex trafficking?

Shut.
It.
Down.

NOW.
https://twitter.com/soychicka

MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte

US NAVAL ACADEMY PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIO VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Tech Policy
MIT Media Lab founder: Taking Jeffrey Epstein’s money was justified
At an internal meeting, Nicholas Negroponte shocked some people with his comments on funding from the alleged sex trafficker.
by Angela Chen and Karen Hao
Sep 4, 2019
MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito has faced pressure to resign after revealing that he took research funding from financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But today Nicholas Negroponte, who cofounded the Media Lab in 1985 and was its director for 20 years, said he had recommended that Ito take Epstein’s money. “If you wind back the clock,” he added, “I would still say, ‘Take it.’” And he repeated, more emphatically, “‘Take it.’”

Negroponte’s comments, made at the end of an all-hands Media Lab meeting this afternoon (September 4), shocked many people in the audience. At least some in the room understood him to be saying that he would have supported taking the money even if he had known then that Epstein was a suspected sex trafficker.

In an earlier version of this story, that is how we reported his remarks. Negroponte has not responded to the request for comment we made before publishing the story, but in a subsequent statement to the Boston Globe, he appeared to say otherwise—namely, that he defended the original decision to take money from Epstein, who at the time had already been convicted of and served time for a sexual offense involving a minor, but wouldn’t have defended it in light of the more recent charges.

Regardless, Negroponte’s comments may also shift a narrative that, at least in public, has primarily blamed Ito for working with Epstein. Though Negroponte is no longer director, his justifications help explain the mindset that led so many intellectual luminaries to associate with Epstein.

“Good grief”
Epstein, who died by suicide in August, was arrested in July and accused of running a years-long sex trafficking operation. In 2008 he had been convicted of procuring an underage girl for prostitution. Epstein was a patron of many famous scientists, including geneticist George Church, biologist Martin Nowak, physicist Lawrence Krauss, and evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers.

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Also stay updated on MIT Technology Review initiatives and events?YesNo

In August, Ito, who has led the MIT Media Lab since 2011, revealed that he too had taken money from Epstein for both the Media Lab and his private ventures. (Ito is also on the board of MIT Technology Review; none of Epstein’s money contributed to this publication’s funding, which comes from the MIT general budget.) Ito’s disclosures led to the resignation of both Ethan Zuckerman—a well-known technology activist who ran the Media Lab’s Center for Civic Media, and who said he had urged Ito in 2014 not to meet with Epstein—and Media Lab visiting scholar J. Nathan Matias. Neither Zuckerman nor Matias responded to requests for comment regarding their departures.

Today’s meeting, attended by a journalist from MIT Technology Review, was meant to be a highly choreographed attempt to ease tensions over the controversy and begin addressing its root causes. The afternoon started off with a collective breathing exercise. The organizers then shared a 90-day action plan before giving Ito the floor to answer questions he had faced since the revelations.

One of those questions was whether he had considered resigning. He said he had, but after consulting many people, including civil rights leaders, on how to conduct an effort in restorative justice, he concluded that he should stay at the Media Lab and help with the healing process. Ito struck an apologetic and pleading tone, repeatedly admitting to his mistakes in accepting the money, and acknowledging the pain he had caused and the learning he still needed to do. “I’m part of the problem when I thought I was part of the solution,” he said. “I’m that guy that I thought I was going after.” The room stayed quiet and somber, and his comments ended in silence.

Answering subsequent questions, Ito said he had taken $525,000 in funding from Epstein for the Lab. Because of the way it was allocated and spent, it had inadvertently been used by everyone there.

Throughout, the meeting had proceeded calmly. But as one of the organizers began to wrap things up, Negroponte stood up, unprompted, and began to speak. He discussed his privilege as a “rich white man” and how he had used that privilege to break into the social circles of billionaires. It was these connections, he said, that had allowed the Media Lab to be the only place at MIT that could afford to charge no tuition, pay people full salaries, and allow researchers to keep their intellectual property.

Negroponte said that he prided himself on knowing over 80% of the billionaires in the US on a first-name basis, and that through these circles he had come to spend time with Epstein. Over the years, he had two dinners and one ride in Epstein’s private jet alone, where they spoke passionately about science. (He didn’t say whether these occurred before or after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.) It was these interactions, he said, that warmed him to Epstein and made him confidently and enthusiastically recommend that Ito take the money.

It was at this point that Negroponte said he would still have given Ito the same advice today. Different people in attendance had conflicting interpretations of his statement. Some understood him to mean he would act the same way even knowing what he knows now about Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking. But Negroponte told the Boston Globe that in retrospect, “Yes, we are embarrassed and regret taking his money.”

The comments clearly stunned some of his listeners. A woman in the front row began crying. Kate Darling, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, shouted, “Nicholas, shut up!” Negroponte responded that he would not shut up and that he had founded the Lab, to which Darling said, “We’ve been cleaning up your messes for the past eight years.”

Zuckerman, who had spoken earlier in the meeting, also had a brief spat with Negroponte. Negroponte pressed on: in the fund-raising world, he said, these types of occurrences were not out of the ordinary, and they shouldn’t be reason enough to cut off business relationships. It wasn’t until Darling yelled “Shut up!” again that Negroponte mumbled “Good grief,” and sat down. Soon after, the meeting disbanded.

The future of the “Future Factory”
The Media Lab was founded in 1985 and became famous throughout the 1980s and 1990s for its interdisciplinary research. “It has a giant reputation and a cachet that others do not,” says Margaret O’Mara, a historian of technology at the University of Washington. “The cool kids of the tech world have been celebrating the Media Lab for a long time.” That’s particularly because of its idealistic ethos.

Counterculture icon Stewart Brand wrote a book on the Lab, and Negroponte, who once had an influential column in Wired—a magazine in which he was also an early investor—was key to building the aura of cool. “Negroponte was exceptionally good at projecting what the lab was doing externally, talking it up, bringing in the corporate funding,” says Thomas Haigh, a historian of science at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Negroponte’s comments today underline the broader cultural reckoning that MIT may be facing around the Epstein scandal. Ito today said he did not make the decision to accept Epstein’s funding on his own, but had asked many advisors to weigh in and had received a full due-diligence review from the university. Many more of his advisors, he said, encouraged him to proceed than cautioned against it. Since Ito’s apology, prominent members of the technology community—including MIT Media Lab members Jonathan Zittrain and Rosalind Picard and Harvard University professor Lawrence Lessig—have signed an unofficial petition in support of Ito though others with the Media Lab have publicly called for him to step down.

MIT president L. Rafael Reif acknowledged the university’s “mistake of judgment” in an email sent to the MIT community in late August. MIT received $800,000 over 20 years from Epstein, some of it predating Ito—all of which went to either the Media Lab or MIT professor Seth Lloyd. MIT provost Marty Schmidt will be convening a group to investigate the Epstein donations, and the university will donate an amount equaling those funds to a charity, either to Epstein’s victims or to other victims of sexual abuse.

Editor's note: This story was originally published under the headline "MIT Media Lab founder: I would still take Jeffrey Epstein’s money today." It has been updated, and the headline has been changed, to reflect the apparent ambiguity in Negroponte's remarks at the meeting. Details on Kate Darling's interaction with Negroponte were also added.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6142 ... sex-abuse/

This ‘John Doe’ Really Wants to Keep the Jeffrey Epstein Docs a Secret
An unnamed man is asking a judge to keep a deposition in a case against Epstein's alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, from becoming public. By Emma Ockerman Sep 4 2019, 9:54

An anonymous man would really like to keep his name — and his alleged connection to the deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — a secret.

His fear, according to court documents filed Tuesday, is that past legal challenges implicating the disgraced financier may also “implicate the privacy and reputational interests” of people like him, who haven’t been directly involved in any litigation against Epstein, according to Bloomberg News.

The unnamed man, otherwise known as “John Doe,” asked that the judge overseeing the sealed deposition of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s more vocal accusers who sued his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation in 2015, keep those documents sealed or at least partially redacted.

READ: Epstein accuser says Britain's Prince Andrew abused her

John Doe didn’t say why his name might appear in any documents relating to that case, according to Bloomberg News, though the last round of documents the judge unsealed included Giuffre’s allegations that Prince Andrew and financier Glenn Dubin abused her when she was a minor and being flown around the world by Epstein. (Both men denied the allegations.)

Epstein, who was charged with human trafficking and conspiracy in July, killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell in early August and effectively ended the government’s investigation into his crimes. None of his alleged co-conspirators or enablers have been charged in the international sex ring Epstein allegedly organized to abuse dozens of young girls. But federal investigators have vowed to look into his associates, although they’re not yet naming any target in particular.

READ: Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are enraged they can’t face him in court

Giuffre, meanwhile, sued Maxwell after the woman called Giuffre a liar when she went public with her accusations against Epstein. In her deposition, Giuffre alleged that Epstein, with Maxwell’s help, abused her over the course of several years when she was a teenager and forced her into having sex with other men. Maxwell denied Giuffre’s allegations and the case was settled for an undisclosed amount. The related court documents were kept secret until hundreds of pages were unsealed just one day before Epstein’s suicide on August 10.

And U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska is set to discuss Wednesday whether another trove of documents relating to that case should be made public. It’s unclear whether the judge will abide by the John Doe’s wish to remain unidentified.

READ: Jeffrey Epstein's taste in art, books, and music seems pretty twisted in hindsight

Cover: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005, in New York City. (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kxd ... s-a-secret

What is Promis and how did the software program change the course of history?


The Secret Life of Jeffrey Epstein. In part 5, a 50-year old mystery and the brand new interview that may solve it. @NarativLive. Support us at

https://www.pscp.tv/w/1eaJbAEvRpkGX?t=11m50s

Part 4 of The Secret Life of #JeffreyEpstein. 'Game of Leverage'. How didi Epstein die?
https://www.pscp.tv/ZevShalev/1LyxBAWvjoLJN

seemslikeadream wrote:good stuff

What is Promis and how did the software program change the course of history?

Elvis » Fri Sep 06, 2019 7:25 pm wrote:

seemslikeadream wrote:good stuff

What is Promis and how did the software program change the course of history?

good stuff yes, thanks!

The Undying Octopus: FBI and the PROMIS affair Part 1
35 years later, file reveals dropped leads and confirmed allegations in “the scandal that wouldn’t die”
Written by Emma Best
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... is-part-1/

May 18, 2017
The Undying Octopus: FBI and the PROMIS affair Part 2
As connections in the case grew deeper and more wide-reaching, newly released evidence hints that the Bureau sabotaged its own investigation
Written by Emma Best
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... is-part-2/

PTECH, 9/11, and USA-SAUDI TERROR - Part I

PROMIS Connections to Cheney Control of
9/11 Attacks Confirmed
by
Jamey Hecht
With research assistance by Michael Kane
and editorial comment by Michael C. Ruppert
https://www.fromthewilderness.net/free/ ... tml#promis

How An Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted.

Ronan Farrow
The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein than it has previously acknowledged, and it attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds, and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university. Perhaps most notably, Epstein appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations, including the technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates and the investor Leon Black. According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest. The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or “he who must not be named.”

The financial entanglement revealed in the documents goes well beyond what has been described in public statements by M.I.T. and by Ito. The University has said that it received eight hundred thousand dollars from Epstein’s foundations, in the course of twenty years, and has apologized for accepting that amount. In a statement last month, M.I.T.’s president, L. Rafael Reif, wrote, “with hindsight, we recognize with shame and distress that we allowed MIT to contribute to the elevation of his reputation, which in turn served to distract from his horrifying acts. No apology can undo that.” Reif pledged to donate the funds to a charity to help victims of sexual abuse. On Wednesday, Ito disclosed that he had separately received $1.2 million from Epstein for investment funds under his control, in addition to five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that he acknowledged Epstein had donated to the lab. A spokesperson for M.I.T. said that the university “is looking at the facts surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s gifts to the institute.”

The documents and sources suggest that there was more to the story. They show that the lab was aware of Epstein’s history—in 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution—and of his disqualified status as a donor. They also show that Ito and other lab employees took numerous steps to keep Epstein’s name from being associated with the donations he made or solicited. On Ito’s calendar, which typically listed the full names of participants in meetings, Epstein was identified only by his initials. Epstein’s direct contributions to the lab were recorded as anonymous. In September, 2014, Ito wrote to Epstein soliciting a cash infusion to fund a certain researcher, asking, “Could you re-up/top-off with another $100K so we can extend his contract another year?” Epstein replied, “yes.” Forwarding the response to a member of his staff, Ito wrote, “Make sure this gets accounted for as anonymous.” Peter Cohen, the M.I.T. Media Lab’s Director of Development and Strategy at the time, reiterated, “Jeffrey money, needs to be anonymous. Thanks.”

Epstein’s apparent role in directing outside contributions was also elided. In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, “This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.” Cohen replied, “For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.” A mandatory record of the gift filed within the university stated only that “Gates is making this gift at the recommendation of a friend of his who wishes to remain anonymous.” Knowledge of Epstein’s alleged role was usually kept within a tight circle. In response to the university filing, Cohen wrote to colleagues, “I did not realize that this would be sent to dozens of people,” adding that Epstein “is not named but questions could be asked” and that “I feel uncomfortable that this was distributed so widely.” He wrote that future filings related to Epstein should be submitted only “if there is a way to do it quietly.” An agent for Gates wrote to the leadership of the Media Lab, stating that Gates also wished to keep his name out of any public discussion of the donation.

A spokesperson for Gates said that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.” A source close to Gates said that the entrepreneur has a long-standing relationship with the lab, and that anonymous donations from him or his foundation are not atypical. Gates has previously denied receiving financial advisory services from Epstein; in August, CNBC reported that he met with Epstein in New York in 2013, to discuss “ways to increase philanthropic spending.”

Joi Ito and Peter Cohen did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Ito, in his public statements, has downplayed his closeness with Epstein, stating that “Regrettably, over the years, the Lab has received money through some of the foundations that he controlled,” and acknowledging only that he “knew about” gifts and personally gave permission. But the e-mails show that Ito consulted closely with Epstein and actively sought the various donations. At one point, Cohen reached out to Ito for advice about a donor, writing, “you or Jeffrey would know best.”

Epstein, who socialized with a range of high-profile and influential people, had for years been followed by claims that he sexually abused underage girls. Police investigated the reports several times. In 2008, after a Florida state court convicted Epstein of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, he received a controversial plea deal, which shielded him from federal prosecution and allowed him to serve less than thirteen months, and much of it on a “work release,” permitting him to spend much of his time out of jail. Alexander Acosta, the prosecutor responsible for that plea deal, went on to become President Trump’s Secretary of Labor, but resigned from that post in July, amid widespread criticism related to the Epstein case. That same month, Esptein was arrested in New York, on federal sex-trafficking charges. He died from suicide, in a jail cell in Manhattan, last month.

Current and former faculty and staff of the media lab described a pattern of concealing Epstein’s involvement with the institution. Signe Swenson, a former development associate and alumni coordinator at the lab, told me that she resigned in 2016 in part because of her discomfort about the lab’s work with Epstein. She said that the lab’s leadership made it explicit, even in her earliest conversations with them, that Epstein’s donations had to be kept secret. In early 2014, while Swenson was working in M.I.T.’s central fund-raising office, as a development associate, she had breakfast with Cohen, the Director of Development and Strategy. They discussed her application for a fund-raising role at the Media Lab. According to Swenson, Cohen explained to her that the lab was currently working with Epstein and that it was seeking to do more with the financier. “He said Joi has been working with Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein’s connecting us to other people,” Swenson recalled. She assumed that Cohen raised the matter “to test whether I would be confidential and sort of feel out whether I would be O.K. with the situation.”

Swenson had seen that Epstein was listed in the university’s central donor database as disqualified. “I knew he was a pedophile and pointed that out,” she said. She recalled telling Cohen that working with Epstein “doesn't seem like a great idea.” But she respected the lab’s work and ultimately accepted a job with them.

That spring, during her first week in her new role, the issue arose again. Swenson recalled having a conversation with Cohen and Ito about how to take money from Epstein without reporting it within the university. Cohen asked, “How do we do this?” Swenson replied that, due to the university’s internal-reporting requirements, there was no way to keep the donations under the radar. Ito, as Swenson recalled, replied, “we can take small gifts anonymously.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... ey-epstein

PufPuf93 wrote: Isn't PROMIS the software written about by Michael Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon? Been so long since read the book.

Xeni Jardin
‏
More will be revealed. Leon Black. John Brockman. Joi Ito. And those of you whose names have not been publicly exposed yet. I know your names. I know what you did with Jeffrey Epstein. I kept receipts. Have fun trying to sleep.

Soon.

I told the @nytimes everything. So did whistleblowers I was in touch with inside @MIT and @Edge. They printed none of the most damning truths. @joi is on the board of the NYT.

THANK GOD FOR @RonanFarrow

The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab
Like its parent university, the famed research center became far too comfortable selling its prestige. Even to Jeffrey Epstein.

Justin PetersSept 08, 20195:55 AM

The MIT Media Lab.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Unmadindu/Wikipedia
When I first started visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s famed Media Lab in 2007, the place actually looked like an idea factory. Giant containers of liquid nitrogen littered the hallways. There seemed to be some kind of robot around every corner. Researchers studied playful things like the opera of the future and lifelong kindergarten for which they somehow found practical applications. I wrote my masters’ thesis about the Lab’s affective computing research group, which was developing technologies to make it easier for autistic people to sense others’ emotions. My paper was complimentary and credulous. Like so many people who visited the Media Lab, I was taken in by the intoxicating, startup-like atmosphere. It was the most intellectually vivacious and generative place I had ever been.

I kept returning to MIT for years for various reasons, but the bloom eventually fell off the rose. You didn’t have to squint to see that the Media Lab’s whiz-bang vibe was made possible—and was constrained—by the corporate partnerships it worked so hard to cultivate. The building functioned less like a university department than an independent R&D firm for industry; its research groups were conduits for corporate and institutional investment. Each year it hosted a sponsor week during which research groups were expected to dance for their big-money benefactors, corporations like ExxonMobil, Citigroup, PepsiCo, GlaxoSmithKline, and Verizon. Many of its scientists were also involved with private companies that had been founded to monetize their discoveries. A year after I turned in my masters’ thesis, the key members of the affective computing group I had studied founded a company that today partners with “1400+ brands,” builds “automotive AI,” and works with market research firms and other companies to “measure consumer emotion responses to digital content, such as ads and TV programming.” This was what the idea factory was incubating?

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It is neither unusual nor inherently wrong for scientists to take research funding from industry and to seek commercial applications for new technologies. But at the Media Lab, the gulf between the corporate benefactors and the institution’s lofty rhetoric of scientific exceptionalism felt especially jarring. Founded in 1985, the Media Lab cultivated an image as a haven for misfit geniuses, for academics who, as the Lab’s most recent director put it, “don’t fit in any existing discipline either because they are between—or simply beyond—disciplines.”. These thinkers were the latest inheritors of MIT’s famed “hacker ethic”: iconoclastic engineers who used applied science to try and make the world a better place. Yet the money came from modern-day robber barons, whose main interest in science was how it could be used to sell more cheese.

“The balance is between working more closely with our sponsors and understanding their problems, while continuing to generate the wild and crazy new ideas that they’ve joined us for,” the Lab’s then-director Frank Moss told the MIT Technology Review in 2006. Two years later, Moss announced the launch of the Center for Future Banking, a multimillion-dollar partnership between the Lab and Bank of America that was touted as “a powerful new model by which academia and business will partner to invent the future of entire industries.” This tacky and embarrassing enterprise revealed the truth of the “balance” that Moss had vowed to strike. Moss and his successors’ main goal was to bring in money—lots of money—and they appeared willing to co-opt the Lab’s scholarly pursuits in order to achieve it.

I made my final emotional break with the Media Lab in 2016, when its now-disgraced former director Joi Ito announced the launch of its inaugural “Disobedience Award,” which sought to celebrate “responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging the norms, rules, or laws that sustain society’s injustices,” and which was “made possible through the generosity of Reid Hoffman, Internet entrepreneur, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, and most importantly an individual who cares deeply about righting society’s wrongs.” I realized that the things I had once found so exciting about the Media Lab—the architecturally distinct building, the quirky research teams, the robots and the canisters and the exhibits—amounted to a shrewd act of merchandising intended to lure potential donors into cutting ever-larger checks. The Lab’s leaders weren’t averse to making the world a better place, just as long as the sponsors got what they wanted in the process.

It is this moral vacuity that has now thrown the Media Lab and MIT into an existential crisis. After the financier Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in July on federal sex-trafficking charges, journalists soon learned that Epstein enjoyed giving money to scientists almost as much as he enjoyed coercing girls into sex. The Media Lab was one beneficiary of Epstein’s largesse. Over the past several years, Ito accepted approximately $1.725 million from Epstein, who was already a convicted felon at the time Ito took charge of the place in 2011; $525,000 was earmarked for the Lab, while the rest of the money went to Ito’s private startup investment funds. The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow further reported on Friday that Epstein helped secure an additional $7.5 million for the Media Lab from other wealthy donors, and that the Lab sought to hide the extent of its relationship with Epstein. Ito was Epstein’s contact at the Media Lab. The director even visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island as part of the courtship process.

A jailed Epstein killed himself in August. The Media Lab is now facing its own reckoning. In mid-August, Ito released a public apology letter that, in light of Farrow’s reporting, now seems breathtakingly incomplete. That was followed by an all-MIT apology email sent on August 22 by university president L. Rafael Reif; this email also now reads as limp. Two Media Lab affiliates, Ethan Zuckerman and J. Nathan Matias, decried the Epstein donation in August and announced their intention to leave the Lab at the end of the current academic year; I would be shocked if other affiliates do not join them on their way out the door. A community meeting on Wednesday ended in disaster when former Media Lab head Nicholas Negroponte said that he would still have advised Ito to take Epstein’s money. (He later clarified that he meant that he thought the decision was sound at the time it was made.) The fallout from the meeting made the front page of Friday’s New York Times. On Saturday afternoon, Ito resigned as director of the Media Lab.

The Media Lab has long been academia’s fanciest glue trap for morally elastic rich people.
Ito’s decision to accept Epstein’s money was at best exceptionally stupid, and not just in retrospect; the financier’s 2008 conviction for procuring an underage girl for prostitution was a matter of public record when he and Ito made contact, and should have been sufficient to end their conversation before it began. (According to Farrow, “Epstein was listed as ‘disqualified’ in M.I.T.’s official donor database”. ) But Negroponte’s comments—even in light of his later clarification—indicate the structural rot at the heart of Ito’s choices. The Media Lab has long been academia’s fanciest glue trap for morally elastic rich people. It is a laundromat for capital from some of the world’s least socially conscious entities and individuals, and the Lab has never cared very much about their moral valence as long as their checks cleared.

In this, the Media Lab has apotheosized the capitalistic philosophy of its parent institution, which in the 20th century pioneered the now-common nexus between academic science and private industry. In 1919, MIT president Richard Maclaurin developed a document called the “Technology Plan” that sought to create clear ties and channels between the school and corporate America in order to forge “an alliance between [MIT] and certain of the industries in the solving of such technical problems as might be presented and as [MIT] might properly undertake.” The Technology Plan ran counter to the old-fashioned notion that scientists ought to pursue research in order to add to the common store of knowledge, not so that they or their patrons could realize financial gain. The academic scientist’s reward for good work, instead, is acclaim and stature within her community. Theoretically, at least, professors are salaried and tenured so that they can conduct research pursuant to this communal scientific ethos free from any from profit imperative.

This is not how modern academic science often works in practice, and it is certainly not how things have worked at MIT for the past 100 years. The Technology Plan came to life as the Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research, and it blossomed during and after World War II, as MIT used its experience with external partnerships to secure and fulfill hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government and military grants and contracts. In the 1980s, the Bayh-Dole Act made it possible for universities to patent the results of federally funded research and license those patents to companies. As you might expect, MIT was on the front lines of this lucrative “technology transfer” process. When the end of the Cold War brought reductions in federal science funding, MIT became even more reliant on the private sector, and on rich people who derived some perhaps-intangible benefit from giving money to the school.

I wrote about this history in my 2016 book about the life and death of the programmer Aaron Swartz. Swartz had a complicated relationship with MIT, which liked to portray itself as a safe harbor for unruly intellects. His father worked with the Media Lab, and Swartz himself gravitated to the school, even though he never formally enrolled there. When Swartz was arrested and indicted for using MIT’s computing resources to download 4.7 million documents from JSTOR without explicit authorization, he and his family believed that MIT could be convinced to speak out on his behalf and perhaps help quash the indictment. After all, Swartz’s actions were not all that different from many of the famous “hacks” that MIT affiliates had perpetrated over the years, and that the school had come to officially celebrate. Instead, MIT left Swartz to twist in the wind. A subsequent independent inquiry into MIT’s conduct basically absolved the school for its inaction. It wasn’t personal. It was just business.

In January 2013, days after Swartz killed himself, some of his friends hosted a memorial reception in the lobby of the Media Lab. I attended that reception, but later became upset at the discordance of remembering Swartz in a building that embodied the reasons why MIT had done nothing to help him out of his predicament. According to the Abelson Report, MIT had chosen not to aid Swartz in part because doing so could have sent the wrong message to its institutional partners, which might have interpreted the gesture as MIT coming out as soft on content piracy. And then Swartz died, and the Media Lab was the site of an ice cream social in his honor. The Media Lab and MIT were capable of anything, it seemed, except meaningful self-reflection.

The Media Lab and MIT were capable of anything, it seemed, except meaningful self-reflection.
The Epstein scandal has forced the Media Lab and MIT into that unfamiliar space. In an all-MIT email sent on Saturday afternoon, titled “Fact-finding and action on the Media Lab,” Reif promised “an immediate, thorough and ongoing investigation” into the accusations in the New Yorker story, and claimed that the school was “actively assessing how best to improve our policies, processes and procedures to fully reflect MIT’s values and prevent such mistakes in the future.” I hope that this review examines the structures that not just allowed Ito to accept Epstein’s money and subsequently cover his tracks, but that made the Media Lab into the sort of place where transgression is seen as evidence of genius and social disobedience is underwritten by LinkedIn. “Lab members who defend [Ito] said academia had a long history of accepting funding from dubious characters,” the Times reported on Friday, accurately and depressingly. MIT’s rainmakers have always been tacitly empowered to show bad judgment in pursuit of research funding; to not think too hard about the provenance of the money they raise or the implications of the partnerships they cultivate; or, as seems to have been the case with Joi Ito, to understand why it would be a bad idea to take tainted funding and then to go ahead and cash those checks all the same.

Over the course of the past century, MIT became one of the best brands in the world, a name that confers instant credibility and stature on all who are associated with it. Rather than protect the inherent specialness of this brand, the Media Lab soiled it again and again by selling its prestige to banks, drug companies, petroleum companies, carmakers, multinational retailers, at least one serial sexual predator, and others who hoped to camouflage their avarice with the sheen of innovation. There is a big difference between taking money from someone like Epstein and taking it from Nike or the Department of Defense, but the latter choices pave the way for the former. It is easy to understand why Jeffrey Epstein wanted to get involved with the Media Lab. Unfortunately, it is also easy to understand why Joi Ito got involved with Jeffrey Epstein. The only bad donations were the ones that weren’t received.

Academia Jeffrey Epstein
https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/mi ... l-rot.html

random facts girl.
So.

@Joi never bothered to finish his college degree, but he was put in charge of MIT's Media Lab.

I'm sorry, but there should be a few standards for heading a university department:

1) have a degree
2) don't have longstanding relationships with pedophiles

1) Not having a college degree while heading up a college department shows a lack of respect for the education others have worked for.

It shows that you don't think you're subject to the same rules as everyone else.

I mean, SERIOUSLY.

2) Here's the deal:

Anyone who has a relationship with a serial predator either is not perceptive or is tolerant of that behaviour.

After that person is convicted of said behaviour, and you choose to continue to engage with them and to elevate their profile in ANY way,

YOU HELP THEM PERPETUATE THE CYCLE OF ABUSE.

YOU are just as responsible for any abuse that occurs from that point forward as they are.

YOU help it happen.

And when it goes public that said enabler has continued to enable predation, anyone who continues to support them,
- not calling their judgement into question,
- not calling for them to take a leave of absence while things are investigated at MINIMUM

You are building the cultural framework to allow others to continue enabling this abuse.

And please, read this carefully:

Jeffrey Epstein continued to abuse underage girls while Joi Ito took his money.

Jeffrey Epstein continued to recruit women to recruit "girls" for him to abuse while Joi Ito took his money.

Epstein brought one of his recruiters to MIT, WHILE Epstein was on parole.

And after someone was convicted once, and then additional allegations come out that not only did Epstein start trafficking girls as early as the early 1990s...

but he BOUGHT an 11 year old girl that was kidnapped from Connecticut in 1993 when her mother couldn't pay the ransom

And he and his minions were involved in the architecting of the Pizzagate narrative to drive those victims back into the woodwork - applying an understanding of social media dynamics, a key focus of the Media lab -

knowing that has been in the public sphere for 3yrs:

When you sign a letter supporting them going forward, you exhibit the type of unacceptable judgement for any position of power in society

Even if - no - ESPECIALLY IF you don't know the depth of all of the details of their involvement before you sign.

Had you taken the time to make a reasoned judgement on this issue, had you made an effort to look at the publicly available facts with the same rigor you purport to apply to academic pursuits...

you wouldn't have signed that letter.

And that brings your professional judgement into question as well.

Unless you signed the letter as Ito's "friend," which carries a whole NEW slew of issues.

So, now that you know all of this, please take some time away from sharing your opinions on social media - because right now, you don't understand the depth and gravity of your willful blindness and/or eagerness to perpetuate a system where, even if women are believed,

accountability for those enabling their abuse is pushed to the side, because SCIENCE. Because WE NEED PROGRESS.

Because DAMN THE TORPEDOES, FULL STEAM AHEAD and you need that injection of cash to GO GO GO.

Because here is what that letter you signed said:

YOU ARE AN IMPORTANT PERSON, and
victims are NOT important people.

Sure, what happened to you sucks, but WE'RE MOVING ON.
Don't be so negative. PROGRESS!

Because you didn't take the time to fully investigate what your signature meant - how many fancy people permitted Epstein to continue with his 'recreational pursuits' because SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY...

you enabled the perpetuation of that.

And, equally as wrong - there are those of us out here who have vision, but we also have ethics that prevent us from engaging with systems where ignorance can be bought at a price.

Your permissivity ensures we don't get a seat at the table - not because we're unqualified, but because we're unwilling to sit down to dinner with a serial child rapist.

And that exclusion through inclusion of predators is what makes the system GO GO GO!

So, yeah.

You're culpable.

You can't be trusted.
There will not be any sympathy for you in the short term.

You want to keep your seat at the table?
Prove that you understand what you have done.

Not in platitudes or apologies.

Use your brain to formulate first an understanding of the impact of your behaviour - you know how long you knew Epstein was there for: figure out the percentage of culpability you need to own: how many victims were ignored because HE FUNDS SCIENCE

Model the dynamics of the permissivity of sexual abuse and the tolerance thereof in academia, in government, in business -

wherever predators are in power.

What models best reflect the patterns of cultural dynamics and cognition that led you to your behaviour?

More importantly, model what approach(es) will help to eradicate the unhealthy academic culture of sticking by your guy, so we can secure resources to make that change happen

We're going to be undergoing a significant cultural shift in the next few years, where many predators in positions of power - as well as those who abuse their power to protect those predators - will be exposed.

Some may undergo their own personal reckoning with what they have done in advance, come to terms with and publicly acknowledge their role in complicity, like:

thanks to the social capital you extended, predators like Epstein were able to rape a 14yo girl for, say, 7 minutes.

And to those who don't engage in that reckoning proactively?

We'll do it for you.
And you will not be welcome to engage with students in the vaulted halls of academia, nor the marble halls of governance.

We will strip you of your power.
We will strip you of your privilege.

Your expertise will be outweighed by your lack of fitness to treat other human beings with respect and dignity.

Those who have promoted you in the past will know that continuing to do so now will be at a cost to their own position.

As it should be.

And those vacated positions of honor that permit academic pursuits will be filled by those with both

the capacity to exhibit subject matter expertise, AND

the legitimacy to wield the power over others based on the merits of their work, not on androcentric patronage schemes.

The pseudomeritocratic ouroboros perpetuating predatory behaviour through ideological and pseudointellectual onanism is about to forcibly be sliced through its pale, exposed, gluttonously distended belly.

IOW: we're breaking up your academic circle jerk, and your positions will be given to those who didn't get a chance when you were busy fapping off with sexual predators.

To those who can be trusted by ALL students and citizens to honor the principle of "first, do no harm."

And some may feel obligated, I guess, to continue fellating your disgraced heroes - but this is the generation that will learn to keep pedophile and other predators' dicks out of our collective orifices.

And bank accounts.

You can have that, or you can have respect.
Choose.

But in the meantime, until you've decided?

Shut up.

Stay off social media. Sorry, but the value of your 'expertise' right about now is nil.

It only serves to show that you're going on about your business as usual, while your judgement has been shown to be shite.

Sit down tomorrow, and think deep thoughts.

Write out what you knew and when. Who lied to you, and what you overlooked. How much financial/promotional support you secured through Epstein, knowingly or unknowingly...

Make the same queries of those you've collaborated with.

It's time for a reckoning.

So please, get to it.
https://twitter.com/soychicka/status/11 ... 5535348737

And he just walked along, alone
With his guilt so well concealed
And muttered underneath his breath
Nothing is revealed